Shotlist

"Four or five days into it he tried to stand up at the table and fell, by the end of the night he was completely paralyzed from the neck down."

4.Still of Jennifer and Reid

5.SOUNDBITE (English) Jennifer Peteet, Winder, Georgia:

"His cry was off, he wasn't making tears, he was sleeping a lot, I literally felt like I was watching him die."

6.Still shot of Reid in hospital

7. SOUNDBITE (English) Jennifer Peteet, Winder, Georgia:

"Two to three days before they actually were able to diagnose it.

8.Still of Reid in hospital

9.Shot of Reid scooting on floor

Atlanta, Georgia - 13 November 2018

10.Exterior shot of CDC

11.SOUNDBITE (English) Kristen Nordlund, Centers for Disease Control:

"We have now confirmed 90 cases in 27 states and an there are an additional 162 cases that are awaiting confirmation or are under investigation."

12.Various exterior CDC shots

Winder, Georgia - 26 October 2018

13. Shot of Reid scooting on floor at home

Atlanta, Georgia - 23 October 2018

14. SOUNDBITE (English) Kathleen Dooling, CDC Epidemiologist:

"Acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM is a very serious but very rare condition. Since 2014 when we first started tracking this phenomena, we've observed that on average less than one in a million children are affected by this condition."

Storyline

Childhood cases of a mysterious paralyzing illness are continuing to mount, and health officials say this year's count could surpass the numbers seen in similar outbreaks in 2014 and 2016.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the disease is rare and only 90 cases, across 25 states have been confirmed in 2018.

CDC officials say it's still not clear what's causing some children to lose the ability to move their face, neck, back, arms or legs. The symptoms tend to occur about a week after they had a fever and respiratory illness.

Health officials call the condition Acute flaccid myelitis. Doctors have suspected it might be tied to a kind of enterovirus, such as EV-D68 or EV-A71. A spike in EV-D68 illnesses coincided with the first mysterious wave of paralysis cases in 2014.

But it's not clear why most people infected with those viruses suffer only cold symptoms. It's noteworthy that there was no spike in EV-D68 when a larger wave occurred in 2016, CDC officials said.

And then there's the lack of clinical evidence: CDC officials have checked the spinal fluid of 77 of the 90 patients and found EV-68 in only one case and EV-A71 in only one other.

Some possible suspects, such as polio and West Nile virus, have been ruled out.

About 120 confirmed cases were reported in 2014. Another 149 were reported in 2016. In 2015 and 2017, the counts of reported illnesses were far lower.

The illness spikes in September each year. But it can take weeks to study them and decide if they should be counted in the outbreak. More than 250 more illnesses are being investigated, and some or many of those may join the count, CDC officials said.